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Well, I'm back
I've managed to cart my tired ass halfway across the country in a car without air conditioning-an experience which I do not care to repeat. I've also managed to survive my first week of ten hour work days and get internet access. This past week has not been good to me-so I'm going to complain about it later.
I will not complain about working conditions-but let's just say that the DoE could have been slightly more generous with their funding. And I'm trying not to think about them.
Instead, you're getting a rant about the G8 protesters.
News Flash: Conditions in Africa are poor.
This should not be news to anybody who can find Africa on a map of the world given two tries, but apparently it was news of a sort to the protesters who turned out to the G8 this year. I say this because, despite massive mobilization, lots of press coverage, and an opportunity sent to them directly from heaven, they failed to come up with a more impressive message.
Actually, they failed to come up with a message period.
It's pathetic in some ways. They had such a good chance to come together and demonstrate a grass-roots interest in Africa and the developing world, to show their solidarity and present alternatives to the current direction of international development. Instead, as usual, a lot of groups bungled it and ended up indulging in rhetoric, antics and shouting matches that they could ill afford. It's not their fault. Most of the people there probably would have loved a dedicated, well-thought-out message. But protesters are rarely emotionally detached from their subject. And so everything disintegrated into the usual godawful mess.
The problem with the G8 is that it's the only thing we've got. It's the only international forum in which we can expect any sort of solution relating to debt relief, global action against poverty, environmentalism and peacekeeping can be discussed without any kind of result. You would think that thousands of people would show up to support Tony Blair's focus on Africa. Instead we get a small disaster on our hands.
Not that the protesters are wholly wrong. After all, $50 billion is not going to be enough to do much-even if it did end up in the right hands. The conclusions on what to do about Carbon Dioxide emissions were, to be frank, embarrassing. But they were something-and that may be more than we had before. It's true that the presentation seemed fuddled and removed from reality-but at least we got something out of it. Which seemed to be more than we got from the other side.
Browsing around, I see many of the same arguments on the protesting side. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be any better thought out than the last time they were proposed:
Debt Relief: It's a damn good idea. In principle it would eliminate the problems many Africans face. Practically, it's a nightmare. Make Poverty History claims that Africa suffers from debt payments of over $10 billion a year. That's a rather substantial amount of money counted in the ledgers of many organizations. It's hard to find that kind of cash just lying around. Fingers are pointed as usual, at the IMF and the World Bank primarily. Problem is, neither of those organizations can go off and forgive debt on their own. The IMF won't, because you signed on the dotted line and accepted those conditions-and if your economy can't stand it than it's your own damn fault (incidentally, I feel that the IMF is pigheaded about this whole issue-but they are responsible for all that cash). The World Bank can't, because it's not their money, it belongs to people all over the world. Nobody's found a good can that can be practically tapped in order to achieve debt relief. I'm sure there would be great outcry in Britain if Blair cut five or six billion dollars out of the education budget and put it into debt relief.
Cut CO2 emissions: Another good plan. Many countries are already moving to it. However, no feasible long term plan has been established-and everybody knows it. In addition nobody has figured out how to do this with the emerging countries-nations such as China and India. Without their cooperation everything we do it meaningless, but nobody has a good way to make developing economies less polluting. Technology may provide the answer, but it's being slowly developed. Perhaps now would be a good time to put more effort into developing clean industries and creating a valid test base for clean energy systems. Unfortunately, this is rarely brought up.
Reduce Oil Dependency: The nuclear fusion people are working as fast as they can. Unfortunately, they're not getting much help from the general public. In fact, nobody is getting much help from outside their disciplines these days. God knows we would like public rallies supporting fusion research, photovoltaic development (although that's unlikely to produce good results) and effective power transportation methods (because we're not allowed to put microwave transmitters into space and such). But we don't get support for that. What we do get it people protesting the competitors. This is nice, but it might be better to support renewable energy methods as well, instead of just bashing fossil fuels. We're dying over here.
Stop Global Corporatism: This would be nice as well-if somebody has a good way to do it. We're at a stage where capitalism has evolved into the panorama of corporations that we know today. Due to rapid communications, a huge economy, and consumer habits, the multinational corporation is the wave of the future. There seems to be no alternative to large corporations, and the protestors have not provided one.
Stop Wage Slavery: This is a central problem for me. The idea that, somehow, the G8 leaders are directly responsible for what shoe makers in China are paid. It seems to be a result of separating the world into "The Oppressed" and "The Man". If you're not being oppressed, than you're in the giant conspiracy of oppressors. This would make many things the fault of government. The problem is that many of the problems with global sweatshops are a result of the fact that there are no labor protections in many foreign countries, and corporations take advantage of that. Of course we could stop that, if we were allowed to go into third-world countries and tell them how to write their laws. Of course it would be only for their own good...
In conclusion, they're all valid complaints, but we've heard them before. Until someone comes up with working models for the solution we'll be sitting here waiting to hear something better. And the G8 are going to make much more of a difference than the grass-roots protesters are going to.
Interestingly enough, nobody ever really tackled the central issue on Africa, the fact that Africa is generally disaster-ridden, war-torn and corrupt. The entire continent leaks like a sieve, money goes in = money goes out. Governments indulge in buying jet fighters from Soviet arsenals while people starve. Even if the sudden leftist embrace of Reaganomics (we give money to the governments in the hopes that sooner or later it will trickle down to the people) is justified, there's still too much loss in the system to make it reasonable. So far nobody has come up with an acceptable solution to this problem, because the only current solutions involve giving the first world even more power over Africa. And despite hundreds of thousands of protesters, hours of government deliberation, and much head searching all over the globe, we are still as far away from a solution now as we were before.
In the meantime, there is a solution on a country by country basis. We can invade countries controlled by corrupt dictatorships, remove their current regime, replace it with a democratic parliament that can write its own constitution, and garrison the country until the last insurgents are put down and the new people's government is happily in place before we move on to the next country. This should make everybody happy.
...right?
I don't know why I did that. It's fairly ranty and anti-leftist, for me. Maybe because I'm just fed up with the lack of action that I've seen so far on Africa from protesters. For the most part, it seems that they've been more anti-first world than pro-third world and that just bugs me. Won't somebody think of the children?
In other news, I'm bored, so please flame me.
I will not complain about working conditions-but let's just say that the DoE could have been slightly more generous with their funding. And I'm trying not to think about them.
Instead, you're getting a rant about the G8 protesters.
News Flash: Conditions in Africa are poor.
This should not be news to anybody who can find Africa on a map of the world given two tries, but apparently it was news of a sort to the protesters who turned out to the G8 this year. I say this because, despite massive mobilization, lots of press coverage, and an opportunity sent to them directly from heaven, they failed to come up with a more impressive message.
Actually, they failed to come up with a message period.
It's pathetic in some ways. They had such a good chance to come together and demonstrate a grass-roots interest in Africa and the developing world, to show their solidarity and present alternatives to the current direction of international development. Instead, as usual, a lot of groups bungled it and ended up indulging in rhetoric, antics and shouting matches that they could ill afford. It's not their fault. Most of the people there probably would have loved a dedicated, well-thought-out message. But protesters are rarely emotionally detached from their subject. And so everything disintegrated into the usual godawful mess.
The problem with the G8 is that it's the only thing we've got. It's the only international forum in which we can expect any sort of solution relating to debt relief, global action against poverty, environmentalism and peacekeeping can be discussed without any kind of result. You would think that thousands of people would show up to support Tony Blair's focus on Africa. Instead we get a small disaster on our hands.
Not that the protesters are wholly wrong. After all, $50 billion is not going to be enough to do much-even if it did end up in the right hands. The conclusions on what to do about Carbon Dioxide emissions were, to be frank, embarrassing. But they were something-and that may be more than we had before. It's true that the presentation seemed fuddled and removed from reality-but at least we got something out of it. Which seemed to be more than we got from the other side.
Browsing around, I see many of the same arguments on the protesting side. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be any better thought out than the last time they were proposed:
Debt Relief: It's a damn good idea. In principle it would eliminate the problems many Africans face. Practically, it's a nightmare. Make Poverty History claims that Africa suffers from debt payments of over $10 billion a year. That's a rather substantial amount of money counted in the ledgers of many organizations. It's hard to find that kind of cash just lying around. Fingers are pointed as usual, at the IMF and the World Bank primarily. Problem is, neither of those organizations can go off and forgive debt on their own. The IMF won't, because you signed on the dotted line and accepted those conditions-and if your economy can't stand it than it's your own damn fault (incidentally, I feel that the IMF is pigheaded about this whole issue-but they are responsible for all that cash). The World Bank can't, because it's not their money, it belongs to people all over the world. Nobody's found a good can that can be practically tapped in order to achieve debt relief. I'm sure there would be great outcry in Britain if Blair cut five or six billion dollars out of the education budget and put it into debt relief.
Cut CO2 emissions: Another good plan. Many countries are already moving to it. However, no feasible long term plan has been established-and everybody knows it. In addition nobody has figured out how to do this with the emerging countries-nations such as China and India. Without their cooperation everything we do it meaningless, but nobody has a good way to make developing economies less polluting. Technology may provide the answer, but it's being slowly developed. Perhaps now would be a good time to put more effort into developing clean industries and creating a valid test base for clean energy systems. Unfortunately, this is rarely brought up.
Reduce Oil Dependency: The nuclear fusion people are working as fast as they can. Unfortunately, they're not getting much help from the general public. In fact, nobody is getting much help from outside their disciplines these days. God knows we would like public rallies supporting fusion research, photovoltaic development (although that's unlikely to produce good results) and effective power transportation methods (because we're not allowed to put microwave transmitters into space and such). But we don't get support for that. What we do get it people protesting the competitors. This is nice, but it might be better to support renewable energy methods as well, instead of just bashing fossil fuels. We're dying over here.
Stop Global Corporatism: This would be nice as well-if somebody has a good way to do it. We're at a stage where capitalism has evolved into the panorama of corporations that we know today. Due to rapid communications, a huge economy, and consumer habits, the multinational corporation is the wave of the future. There seems to be no alternative to large corporations, and the protestors have not provided one.
Stop Wage Slavery: This is a central problem for me. The idea that, somehow, the G8 leaders are directly responsible for what shoe makers in China are paid. It seems to be a result of separating the world into "The Oppressed" and "The Man". If you're not being oppressed, than you're in the giant conspiracy of oppressors. This would make many things the fault of government. The problem is that many of the problems with global sweatshops are a result of the fact that there are no labor protections in many foreign countries, and corporations take advantage of that. Of course we could stop that, if we were allowed to go into third-world countries and tell them how to write their laws. Of course it would be only for their own good...
In conclusion, they're all valid complaints, but we've heard them before. Until someone comes up with working models for the solution we'll be sitting here waiting to hear something better. And the G8 are going to make much more of a difference than the grass-roots protesters are going to.
Interestingly enough, nobody ever really tackled the central issue on Africa, the fact that Africa is generally disaster-ridden, war-torn and corrupt. The entire continent leaks like a sieve, money goes in = money goes out. Governments indulge in buying jet fighters from Soviet arsenals while people starve. Even if the sudden leftist embrace of Reaganomics (we give money to the governments in the hopes that sooner or later it will trickle down to the people) is justified, there's still too much loss in the system to make it reasonable. So far nobody has come up with an acceptable solution to this problem, because the only current solutions involve giving the first world even more power over Africa. And despite hundreds of thousands of protesters, hours of government deliberation, and much head searching all over the globe, we are still as far away from a solution now as we were before.
In the meantime, there is a solution on a country by country basis. We can invade countries controlled by corrupt dictatorships, remove their current regime, replace it with a democratic parliament that can write its own constitution, and garrison the country until the last insurgents are put down and the new people's government is happily in place before we move on to the next country. This should make everybody happy.
...right?
I don't know why I did that. It's fairly ranty and anti-leftist, for me. Maybe because I'm just fed up with the lack of action that I've seen so far on Africa from protesters. For the most part, it seems that they've been more anti-first world than pro-third world and that just bugs me. Won't somebody think of the children?
In other news, I'm bored, so please flame me.
no subject
Maybe the best thing us ordinary people can do is donate money to Concern or Goal or Sightsavers or some other charity. At least then we know the resident despot isn't going to blow all the cash on six new limousines or a petting zoo for his adult sons. And if we know of a company that makes use of child labour and sweatshops, we don't buy their stuff.
The nuclear fusion people are working as fast as they can. Unfortunately, they're not getting much help from the general public.
Don't forget all the people who give out that wind turbines are ruining the view and making funny noises and giving them headaches, even though they don't live right next to them or anything. :eyeroll: You just can't please some people.
You know, if you can crack the hydrocarbons in oil to get the building blocks for plastic polymers, is there some way you could turn the plastic back into oil? Or is that impossible/prohibitively expensive?
no subject
I hear the wind people in the Bay Area are getting in trouble for whacking large numbers of endangered bird species.
no subject
You talk too fucking much and you use too many big words! Remember when you went to Saturn and discovered alien life there!?!? THEY GOT BORED AND WALKED AWAY WHEN YOU WENT INTO A TWO DAY DISCUSSION ON THE FINER POINTS OF MOON CHEESE.
And you're also a jerkwad! You inspired a chapter of the Grand Theft Auto series all by yourself, specifically 'Grand Theft Auto: Grandma Assault'! You make so angry sometimes that I just go 'REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!' whenever I'm playing that game. I'm on 'Foster's Clinical Home' with 47,482 points.
I also hate you because there's a bug in the above game. See, G-Ma Polpoy took out her gat and shot me, then the game crashes! Did your life ever crash whenever somebody shot you? Huh? You think this is a game?
In short, I hate you and I hope you get rabies or Superman 64 or something.
no subject
Dude, Grand Theft Auto: Grandma Assault would rule, but not as much as Grand Theft Auto: Jesus.
no subject
U r a horribul Kapitalist! I bet you dream at night of ways to exploit little Indian children, u horrid person u!
Now that we've got this out of the way...
Interestingly enough, nobody ever really tackled the central issue on Africa, the fact that Africa is generally disaster-ridden, war-torn and corrupt.
This remembers me of 1985, when Bob Geldof launched Live Aid to help Ethiopia, even when Médecins sans frontières (Doctors without borders) was denouncing the dangers of the "humanitarian trap".
Twenty years later, «Make Poverty History» is still reasoning the same way, and giving credit to the idea that you only need to augment resources to fight poverty. BULLSHIT.
Dudes and dudettes, if things were that simple, Nigeria, who received more than 300 billion dollars with its oil, should be one of the richest countries in Africa. Instead of that, most of its population survives with less than 1 dollar per day.
30 years ago, South Korea and Zambia were on the same economic level. So were Senegal and Thailand. South Korea and Thailand today are doing fine on their own, while the two African countries are still getting massive financial help with little to no results.
So colour me mean, but I highly doubt doubling financial help is going to change anything.
Also, for example, less than 5% of the money given for fighting malaria actually goes to the populations. Wonderful.
Also, too much foreign help kills the private sector, and that is A Very Bad Thing. The brightest elements prefer to work for NGOs than for the private sector, while an omnipresent bureaucracy who survives only because of foreign funds stifles the creativity and dynamism of potentials entrepreneurs. Some of the people who were demonstrating in Scotland should get a clue and start reading Hernando De Soto and Eric Bauer. Now.
So in conclusion: in 40 years, no country has been saved by foreign aid. Ever. The countries that made it did so because of their own strengths. So instead of augmenting help, I think we should seriously rethink the way help is distributed, and how it affects national economies.