> FT.com - June 12, 2005
>
> Caution over G8 debt plan for poor countries
> By Chris Giles and Friederike Tiesenhausen Cave
>
> While the Group of Eight finance ministers were hailing a "historic
> breakthrough" at the weekend after they agreed to cancel the debts of
> 18 poor but well-governed countries, doubts were already being raised
> about how great an impact the deal would have.
>
I think the "third world"'s gonna grab the first world by the balls over the next ...few years, at least if the first world want's to maintain it's standard of living using the third world's natural resources... That is, assuming that the "west" isn't interested in (or economically capable of) fighting wars similar to Iraq in dozens of places at the same time.
Quite a few countries south of the (U.S.) border have been actualizing new plans, while our foreign policy people are economically gang raping Iraq, the middle east and Africa.
The poor little rich country
By William Powers The New York Times
MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2005
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/06/12/opinion/edpowers.php
SAMAIPATA, Bolivia For three weeks, Bolivia has been paralyzed by blockades and protests, an uprising that forced the president, Carlos Mesa, to resign last week. The protesters, primarily indigenous Indians, want to nationalize Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves, South America's second largest; BP has quintupled its estimate of Bolivia's proven reserves to 29 trillion cubic feet, worth a whopping $250 billion. The Indians are in a showdown with the International Monetary Fund and companies like British Gas, Repsol of Spain and Brazil's Petrobras that have already invested billions of dollars in exploration and extraction.
Many are calling developments of the past several years in Bolivia a war against globalization, but in fact this is more of a struggle over who has power here. An American Indian majority is standing up to the light-skinned, European elite and its corruption-fueled relations with the world.
When the Spanish Empire closed shop here in 1825, the Europeans who stayed on didn't seem to notice - and still don't. Even within Latin America, Bolivia is known for its corruption. It's also divided along a razor-sharp racial edge. Highland and Amazon peoples compose almost two-thirds of the population. And while Indians are no longer forcibly sprayed with DDT for bugs and are today allowed into town squares, Bolivian apartheid - a "pigmentocracy of power" - continues.
Leigh http://www.leighm.net