$50B for Africa

$50 billion in aid for Africa by 2010. According to one source, Blair made the statement that this would 'end poverty in Africa by 2010'.

I'm just going to warn all of you now: when nothing has changed in five years, I am going to stick out my tongue and say 'I told you so' about a hundred times.

Not tying aid to government reform will accomplish nothing.

Ye, with Africa its always that stupid feeling that without that money so much more people die, yet, giving it doesnt change much fundamentally. Personally I have great hate for so many of African leaders who talk as if they were *entitled* to money pouring in.
I`d understand if it really changed much, but if you act like that and then make a big payday to all your cronies, it leaves really bad taste in the mouth.

Well, when you have countries that no one has ever even heard of... with people dying by the thousands of starvation, and a leader who acts like he was the leader of the richest nation around, what do you expect?

While I'm glad to hear that we're giving them that money, somehow, I won't be surprised if most of it goes to a King's new bedroom or a nation's new jets.

Of course no details in the article. They better not just toss more money at the problem; might as well just burn the money or give it to me

Best quote from the article:

Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned against going too far and putting more restrictions on democracy. In doing that, "We would be giving a great gift to the terrorists themselves because they are aiming exactly for that," Putin told reporters. "They want to use the instruments of democratic society to destroy democracy."

Thanks for the tip dictator.

JMJ wrote:

I'm just going to warn all of you now: when nothing has changed in five years, I am going to stick out my tongue and say 'I told you so' about a hundred times.

Why on Earth would you stick your tongue out at us? Wouldn't Blair be a better target for you spittle?

Mayfield wrote:

Of course no details in the article. They better not just toss more money at the problem; might as well just burn the money or give it to me

Best quote from the article:

Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned against going too far and putting more restrictions on democracy. In doing that, "We would be giving a great gift to the terrorists themselves because they are aiming exactly for that," Putin told reporters. "They want to use the instruments of democratic society to destroy democracy."

Thanks for the tip dictator.

I wonder if this is what bush was talking about seeing in his soul. Putin is a scary guy.

i can comment about this with one word : "SUCKERS!"

it's better if they light a fire and dump the money in it. the corrupt gov'ts of africa will just take the aid into their pockets instead of feeding the hungry. the have an interest that their people will suffer because it keeps them in power.

anyone know where the money sent the Palestinian Athorities went? Arafat's bank accounts is one place. I read that they took the food aid and sold it to the highest bidder instead of distribute it to the hungry.

the only way to feed the hungry is to teach those people how to grow their own food and lend (not give/sell) them the equipment to do it. the g8 has to make sure those people are actually growing food rather than export products. giving money away with no obligations is plain and simple stupid.

Ulairi wrote:

I wonder if this is what bush was talking about seeing in his soul. Putin is a scary guy.

IMAGE(http://www.ljplus.ru/img2/j/o/jolita/3_61.jpg)

That, ladies and gentlemen, is one scary motherf*cker.

He looks like he should be trying to take over the world and fighting James bond.

This is classic. I am looking for a link, but they want to allocate a billion dollars to buy mosquito netting to slow the spread of malaria. Hmmm....maybe....just maybe, they should spend a fraction of that and use DDT.

Why does that headline not say $50B for public schools?

Well wow...everyone in P&C is in agreement

Giving more money to Africa without tieing it to reform = bad
Giving more money to Africa with tieing it to reform = good

Current ideas go with option 1 = bad

Tongues front and center!

And do you know that by typing in his name above, you have some greasy haired pig-balled russian wannabe KGB killer now sitting there reading this site trying to figure out where we all live?

Oh, I'm not for giving any money to Africa at all. I just think it is disasterous to not tie it to reform. Governments shouldn't be in the business of taking money from their citizens and giving it away. Taxes != charity.

I am in favor of removing tariffs and getting rid of agricultural subsidies. That would do more to benefit Africa than any amount of handed out money.

Asked about more aid, a Kenyan health care worker quickly and depressingly predicted that "the aid money will go into the pockets of corrupt officials to buy their fully loaded Mercedes-Benzes."

"For God's sake, please stop the aid," Kenyan economist James Shikwati bluntly told a German weekly. "If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit."

JohnnyMoJo wrote:

I am in favor of removing tariffs and getting rid of agricultural subsidies. That would do more to benefit Africa than any amount of handed out money.

I agree, but it ain't gonna happen. See election year politics manual subsection #23: How to buy the votes of agricultural states that hold too much electoral college power.

Yeah, I know this is gonna sound weird coming from the liberal side of the house, but I'm with Johnny on this one. I'll worry about Africa when 1 in 5 American kids isn't going to bed hungry, when a few million Americans aren't homeless, when Americans have access to medical care, when our schools actually educate kids, when American Veterans aren't being shuffled off to die without care, I'd rather my tax dollars be spent inside my borders, thanks.

If I were running for president...and I'm nowhere near that insane...but if I were, I would absolutely run on the "America First" platform. I'm an isolationist at heart. I think we've overextended and that's the mistake the Roman and British empires both made.

This is classic. I am looking for a link, but they want to allocate a billion dollars to buy mosquito netting to slow the spread of malaria. Hmmm....maybe....just maybe, they should spend a fraction of that and use DDT.

Yeesh Johnny, where are you getting your data? DDT may be practical for an island, but the economics to repeat that success on a continent are daunting.

Sardinia, the poster-child for DDT mosquito eradication, took 5 years to clear and did not actually eliminate all the mosquitos. At it's height, 32,000 sprayers were operating, and over 10,000 tons of DDT were used. Sardinia has an area of just under 9200 square miles. That's nearly 4 sprayers per square smile, and about a ton of DDT per square mile.

Africa has an area of 11,677,240 square miles. Let's assume the mosquitos endanger, oh, 1/3 of that, or about 4 million square miles (it's probably more). That's about 445 times as large as Sardinia. Assuming we target a 5 year project, like Sardinia, that's 14.24M sprayers and 4,450,000 tons of DDT. Nice social welfare project, but the cost of the DDT alone is staggering.

Current DDT cost in Tanzania is about $90USD for a 25Kg bag of 10% dust. Just back of the envelope shows a cost of $900USD for 25Kg pure, which comes to USD36000 a ton. So that's 160,200,000,000USD to saturate 1/3 of Africa to the extent done in Sardinia. And then, when the mosquitos come back from the untreated regions, we get to do it again.

Dealing with the disease, rather than mosquitoes, starts to look real cost-effective about now...Even if we got it at at a huge discount, the cost for the DDT alone (never mind the sprayers, inspectors, workers and monitoring tasks) is way out of line.

DDT resistance is another wild card.

BTW, I'm with you, I think most of what we are pumping into Africa is being wasted. I just don't think you did the math on your DDT comment.
DDT is a local or regional answer, not a permanent one.

...when 1 in 5 American kids isn't going to bed hungry, when a few million Americans aren't homeless, when Americans have access to medical care, when our schools actually educate kids, when American Veterans aren't being shuffled off to die without care,

Ducki, I should just keep my mouth shut since you said you agree with me....b-u-t...

20% of American children don't go to bed hungry. That is a wonderful liberal myth. It is interesting to me how 20% of American children are hungry, and yet obesity in children is a much bigger problem in lower income households. Is it the rich anorexics that you are worried about? I'll dig up the study that shows the logical fallicies of the 'going hungry' statements if you like.

A significant portion of the homeless are mentally ill, and no portion of the homeless problem should be solved with federal tax dollars. Shelters and charities should be funded at no higher than the state level, if they receive any public monies at all.

All Americans do have access to medical care. With or without insurance, no one is turned away from hospitals. My dad had a friend that didn't have insurance who got a blood clot in his leg. He was treated for several months before he eventually died, leaving behind close to $250k in medical bills that the hospital had to write off. There are tons of problems with the medical system, but access isn't one of them.

Education I completely agree with.

And the Veteran issue is much more complex than a soundbite can solve. There is a line between what we (society) owe former soldiers for their service and personal responsibility. Now, if a soldier is permanently wounded in the line of duty, they should receive some form of disability in perpetuity. Other than that, you and I will probably go back to disagreeing.

It would be ideal if no actual money would change hands between G8 and African governments. The West needs to run the actual program soup to nuts in order to ensure that the funds are spent as intended. Similarly to how Bill Gates funds the variety of vertical programs (vaccinations, vitamin-fortified rice and flour, antiseptic and antibiotic spermicidal jelly) with remarkable, if not widely publicized, success.

no portion of the homeless problem should be solved with federal tax dollars. Shelters and charities should be funded at no higher than the state level, if they receive any public monies at all.

Agree with the first premise - but I do believe state level funding of shelters and charities is appropriate, within the given budget of a state. But again, I think NO fed tax dollars should go to the solving the homeless issue...

And both of you are convoluted on the veteran issue - not sure where exactly you stand - but being heavily bias, I feel Vet's should be one of the top few priorities - before the homeless, or illegal immigrants, national medical care, etc - I feel that vets should be taken care of. You give your time to serve your country, I view the country should in turn serve you - for those that haven't served (by service, in my mind, I speak of the military, peace corps and farm industry), sadly, if I was in charge, I'd yank benefits by the bushel from them - just my views.

As a matter of fact, as I near retirement in a few years, I'm thinking that all vets should receive a new loaded BMW convertable as a parting gift upon retirement...use the Africa aid money - I'm ok with that!

And Education will never have reform as long as the teachers union continues to line the Democratic pockets to ensure the standards and needed changes get done.

Well, not that anyone asked, but here are my stands on a lot of these.

I have to agree with Deva. This country has a lot of problems of its own, and we need to fix our own problems before we go around fixing every other problem on the planet. I remember something on the Daily Show like what Deva said... where John talks about how they're going to be bringing electricity to areas that have never had it, give children real educations, etc... no wait... sit down Apalachia, we're not talking about you... today, it's Iraq's turn.

I kinda chuckled at your comments Pigpen... not because I don't believe in the value of our vets, I totally do... I love vets! But... have you tried giving half of them ANYTHING? They... they get scary when you try to give them anything that they'd define as a "handout." They're old! They haven't been in combat in like 50 years... and I still run away from 'em squealing like a little girl.

What's sad, Pigpen, is that so many teacher's unions see that (and for good reasons) as the only viable course of action. The Republicans have so thoroughly f*cked up education in the state of Ohio, it's rediculous. Year after year, they've petitioned the governor and his lackeys to re-write state level funding, because in its current form, it's unconstitutional. And he just sticks his thumb back up his *ss and doesn't even care. We had plenty of conservative educators at my high school... but come election time, you'd never know it.

I firmly do not believe you can lay the problems at the feet of the Republicans - the fact of the matter is a large portion of the problems are attributable to the liberal agenda of not pushing standards, and the liberal love of throwing money at problems as a cure all - when unfortunately, with no plan or standards attached, the money is just wasted.

I don't give the GOP a clean slate either - especially with the race and private school card - but the fact is, I at least see the Republican's trying to make education better - I see the liberals playing the ostrich game - 'everything is fine, head back in sand.'

But - the biggest problem to me, is not the educators, who by and large have a selfless focus on educating youths, or on the two parties, both who want to find a fix one way or another - I place the blame on the parents - in today's 'my kid is fine, don't tell him otherwise' culture. Used to be a day when if you didn't make the standards, you were told you didn't, and faced the repercussions - but today, parents fight it so hard if you tell their child they did wrong, or failed, etc...and all its doing is setting up the entire system to fail, for so many ways. I'm from the old school I guess - if a kid has discipline problems, try to work through them, but get him out of the classroom where he is disrupting things. If the parents are upset, well, hold them up and tell them they are failing at home, so get their sh*t together - enough of this 'dumbing' down the standards so everyone passes...

I at least see the Republican's trying to make education better

So help me... you best not even bring up No Child Left Behind. It's bad enough that thing was signed in my town. More standardized tests and PENALTIES to schools who are struggling is not exactly MY idea of better education. Nor would it be one for any of the teachers in my former high school.

But no, believe it or not Pigs, not EVERYTHING can be attributed to the "liberal agenda." The case I was explicitly refering to is in fact entirely at the feet of Republicans. Governor Taft and his cabinet have been told on MULTIPLE occasions by Ohio's courts that the funding for public schools in Ohio is unconstitutional. The man has not done a thing about it the entire time he's been in office.

There's a reason why some schools in Ohio are still BURNING COAL for heat, while others have computer labs with high speed access. The current system is horrible. And it NEEDS to be re-written.

James Shikwati, a distinguished Kenyan economist, said after G8: "For God's sake, please just stop the aid."

In an interview in der Spiegel, the German magazine, Mr. Shikwati describes what he sees as the disastrous result of aid to Africa. Not only do African leaders exploit it for their own purposes, stuffing their pocketbooks and adding to their power, but aid weakens local markets, destroys incentives and fosters corruption and complacency. He scoffs at the motives of the United Nations World Food Program, "which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of . . . being dedicated to the fight against hunger while . . . being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated."

What the Kenyans have to learn, he says of his own country, is how to help themselves by encouraging sustainable markets. He cites the distribution of corn and clothes as examples of "do-goodism" gone wrong, hurting those it sets out to help in an endless circle of vicious venality. Corn arrives from highly subsidized European and American farmers. African politicians take portions of it to distribute to their constituents. What isn't given away is dumped on the black market, and sold at such bargain prices that an African farmer can't compete, so he puts down his hoe. When the next famine arrives, begging begins again.

African children receive generous packages of clothes. Good? Not necessarily. Local merchants lose their livelihoods because no one in the low-wage world of Africa can compete with the donated products that find their way to the black market. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria's textile industry; six years later, the figure had fallen to 57,000. The results, Mr. Shikwati says, are similar in other areas "where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide."

Robear, regarding your DDT analysis, I hate to say your logic is flawed. The proposal for Africa would be for indoor spraying, which only has to be done once every six months. Also, they spray DDT in urban areas using a large truck-based fog-dispersion system, not people walking on foot. The WHO estimated that DDT use is between 1/2 and 1/23 the cost of other insecticides. And according to economists, the economic costs of malaria in southern Africa equates roughly to 4% of their total GDP.

http://www.malaria.org/tren.html

So help me... you best not even bring up No Child Left Behind. It's bad enough that thing was signed in my town. More standardized tests and PENALTIES to schools who are struggling is not exactly MY idea of better education. Nor would it be one for any of the teachers in my former high school.

The news seems good so far. I think that a lot of the problems are a lack of discipline and a respect for education. I think that poorer schools have bigger problems with those two issues. I think if parents made education the most important thing in their childs life and making sure their kid does well in school, things would get much better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/ed...

So help me... you best not even bring up No Child Left Behind.
There have been many bitter complaints from teachers and principals about the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" act -- and more specifically about having to "teach to the test" instead of doing whatever teachers and principals want to do.

Now the results are in.

Not only have test scores in math and reading shown "solid gains" in the words of the New York Times, young black students have "significantly narrowed the gap" between themselves and white students. All this is based on official annual data from 28,000 schools across the country.

What is especially revealing is that it is the young black students who have made the largest gains while older minority students "scored as far behind whites as in previous decades."

In other words, the children whose education has taken place mostly since the No Child Left Behind act show the greatest gains, while for those whose education took place mostly under the old system, it was apparently too late to repair the damage.

Yep, a bitter failure.

Yep, a bitter failure.

Funny, I would consider the fact that several grade levels of students are unable to be repaired very much a contradiction with the policy's title. Reworking education so that some are ahead is great... until you look at the other end. What are those kids going to do? I dunno, maybe as a teacher in training, I just hate the idea that yet again, schools are being forced to teach to tests to prove themselves worthy. And worse, instead of teaching students things... we're being taught how to teach the test... just seems like a really crappy system in general... but whatever.