From: orwell@reg.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
Subject: Mythologies of Foreign Aid (Re: support for US action in Somalia)
Date: 22 Dec 1992 20:15 PST
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
Distribution: world
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In article <1992Dec22.162239.17450@seachg.uucp>, 
chrisb@seachg.UUCP (Chris Blask) writes...
>I'm going to do something terrible, and repost an entire article.  Mr.
>Foxvog has some wonderfully written words for anyone who didn't catch them
>the first time.

>>[Re-repost of Foxvog article omitted] 

>Bravo!  A voice of reason (and probably the majority, American and other)!!
> 
>Doug, let me personally thank you for summarizing the whole complex
>situation in such a calm and reasonable fashion, my own internal fires can
>get a little over-stoked at times.
> 
>Please, folks, print this out and read it a few times.  Object to bad
>things, promote good; work with us, people.  Please?
> 
>-chris blask

I'd like to explode the floor of fallacious premises (not their fault, I
should add) Chris Blask and others are standing as they debate the issue
of "aid" to Somali by pointing out that U.S. "foreign aid" to the Third
World is a bad thing, **never mind military actions**. I should emphasize
that much of the problem with so-called conventional "foreign aid" on a
government-to-government basis from the First to the Third world are
common to all the First World countries, not unique to the U.S.. There
are some especially problematic aspects with U.S. conventional "foreign
aid" because of the coupling with extensive U.S. government military
"aid" and support (as well as installation) of various neo-fascist Third
World regimes. 

"Foreign aid" has been described as "taking money from poor people
in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries."  What
government-to-government  "foreign aid" actually is is a form of subsidy
to *domestic* agricultural producers and pharmaceutical manufacturers (these,
by the way often "donate" medical supplies which have passed their expiration
date in their own countries and then get tax breaks for doing so). 
This "donation" of food helps destroy the local subsistence agricultural
economy.

A good short (200 pgs.) reference to debunk the misconceptions about
conventional foreign aid is: 

"Aid as Obstacle:
Twenty Questions About our Foreign Aid and the Hungry"

by Francis Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, and David Kinley (1980,1981)
Institute for Food and Development Policy
1885 Mission St.
San Francisco CA 94103 USA

The book is structured in the form of answers (in the form of short 
essays) to twenty questions which reflect the prevailing 
misconceptions (often honest misconceptions but sometimes
the result of deliberate propaganda) about U.S. foreign aid,
focussing on agricultural/food "aid".  The answers have some
interesting specifics about IMF policies, among other things.

Various books by Susan George ("A Fate Worse than Debt",
"Ill Fares the Land", "How the Other Half Dies" and most
recently  "The Debt Boomerang" (Westview Press, 1992) discuss
the consequences of IMF/World Bank "development" policies in
some detail.

Another book which discusses the same issues of Third World economic
development in a somewhat wider context, focussing on the fallacies
of conventional economic theories of development is:

"Developed to Death:
Rethinking Third World Development"

by Ted Trainer (Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, 
Australia), 1989.
Green Print/ The Merlin Press, London, England.

talking about the conventional "trickle down" theory of Third
World development, Trainer says (pg. 47):

"... Over the past two decades a great deal of evidence has 
accumulated showing that very little trickle down ever takes place.
Indeed this may well be the most clearly established proposition to 
have emerged from three decades of development research.  In fact
conventional growth strategies often result in the very opposite
of trickle down ..."

The September/October 1991 issue of the magazine "Mother Jones" 
has an article called "The Hunger" discussing the real
problems in African food production.  The following 3 quotations
are included in that article:

"Let us remember that the main purpose of American aid
is not to help other nations but to help ourselves."
                Richard M. Nixon, 1968

"Food is a weapon, but the way to use it is to tie countries
to us.  That way they'll be far more reluctant to upset us."
     John Black, during confirmation hearings to become 
     U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1981.


"[The World Bank] is not in the business of redistributing 
wealth ... It's not the Robin Hood of the international
financial set."  
      Tom Clausen, President of the World Bank, 1982.


Ron Balden


Newsgroups: alt.activism.d