Thanks Pat.
>Chuck out the rest of it,
>ok?
Well, naturally not. How could I be persuaded by this suggestion, however friendly?
>No foreign loans for basic-needs development (esp.
>water/sanitation infrastructure), since such a tiny proportion
>requires imports.
Granted basic needs do not require much in the way of imports.
But my purpose was not to meet the basic needs of people in Africa. It was to call for global regulation of the massive uneven movements of capital by a mechanism more sophisticated than projecting pity onto the poorest states.
(At least we agree that Africa should not condescendingly be pitied)
>And for corroboration that it's good to cancel all debt AND
>cancel North-South aid, see Opa Kapijimpanga's article in *Reality of
>Aid 2001* (Opa is leader of African Debt and Development Network
>based in Harare.)
I have tracked this down
http://www.irc-online.org/cbl/fairtrade/af/afrodad.html
but not the content of an article.
Can you summarise the key point as to why there should be no North South aid?
Note BTW I am not calling for aid. My call for a global system of ironing out the imbalances of capital accumulation and loss derives from the long term interests of *all* working people of the world, including those of Britain and the USA.
> > There should be campaigning to move debt repayments to a global
> development
> > fund to which debtor countries can apply for their infrastructure.
>
>No comrade, repudiate (not "move") debt repayments, that's the
>programme.
Your programme, but not the programme I am calling for. It is good to argue and debate, but there is no reason why the movement against global finance capital should not be pluralist, or indeed could be anything other than pluralist.
> > Fantastic? Just look at this report. The leaders of the world economy
> > simply do not know what to do in the case of Niger and Mali. The danger is
> > they will just dismiss them as basket cases, or sadly deserving poor, and
> > concentrate on what they think are bigger questions. Once more the problem
> > will have been successfully projected onto the scapegoats.
>Solidarity means siding with the scapegoats, right? Check Jubilee
>South at http://aidc.org.za and do solidarity, not strange new
>international institutions, ok?!
Well now you press me, I am not sure I want to "do solidarity". I am not perhaps motivated by solidarity as such, and certainly not by pity as a balm for scapegoats. I have a sentimental sense of shame that people in the mother continent of our species, should be living in such shameful and degrading condtions so bravely. I am selfish enough to believe that a country that oppresses another cannot itself be free.
But wider, I am trying to address this issue thinking of the long term interests of the working people of the world.
Chris Burford
London