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TorgoX (1933)
sburkeNO@SPAMcpan.org
http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/
"Il est beau comme la retractilité des serres des oiseaux rapaces [...] et surtout, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie !" -- Lautréamont
Someone set up us teh famine!
«Official aid is increasingly being used to drive African countries towards trade liberalisation. [...] The paradox, however, is that the US and EU, the world's two largest trading blocks, are not implementing at home the free trade policies that they insist that African countries take. This was starkly seen last month when the US announced its new farm bill which will increase US farm subsidies by $35bn, or more than $20,000 to each farmer.
European subsidies are only slightly lower, the effect is that rich countries can continue to flood African markets with artificially cheap food and products, and that African producers who get minimal help from their cash-strapped governments find it ever harder to export. The Ghanaian rice industry, Bono and O'Neill saw for themselves, has collapsed in recent years as heavily subsidised US (and Thai) imports have flooded in. From being an exporter, Ghana now imports $100m of rice a year. »
--"Trade not aid: The west demands that African countries adopt free-trade policies, then it floods the continent with subsidised goods which destroy their markets"
I pour myself a cup of strong coffee. :-)
-- Jarkko Hietaniemi
Par for the course (Score:1)
This is distressing, but not particularly surprising. It brings me back to a dilemma faced by all Americans, but one that few will admit.
Why do we have an embargo against Cuba? Ostensibly, it's because of human rights abuses (this, from the country that, amongst other thing, is one of only two countries that won't ratify the international treating guaranteeing the rights of children [unicef.org]) and a failure to adopt democracy. This begs the question "why don't we have embargoes against China?"
A lot of people (i
Re:Par for the course (Score:1)
One reason and one reason only. Cuba nationalized all industry, which US interests held a considerable stake, in 1959.
The US has made and continues to make a long object lesson out of a country so close that dares to ignore sacred property rights.
The fear was that if the US didn't hold out against this, that other nations would follow suit and make the world, or at least this hemisphere, unsafe for International ownership.
Re:Par for the course (Score:2)
and the brother of the President isn't governor of a state that's strongly affected by the politics
While one could make a case that George Bush should now consider lifting the embargo and isn't because of this kind of influence, one should also bear in mind that Bush did not establish the embargo in the first place.
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers