Sweden rejects US poverty proposals

August 28th, 2005 at 14:37 Björn Hallberg

At least it looks like some are making an effort to oppose the US attempt att hijacking the upcoming summit.

Sweden, which is to chair a United Nations summit on sweeping reform of the world body in September, on Friday called a US proposal to scrap ambitious goals to reduce world poverty “not acceptable”.

As is evident from the ranting over at The Local, pro-american pundits seem to have totally infiltrated the comments section. Here are some of the highlights:

The UN can’t even come up with a resolution condemning terrorism because people can’t agree on what constitutes terrorism. We will never alleviate or eradicate poverty, there will always be poor among us, and any attempt is just a drop in the bucket. Obviously it would be nice for everybody in the world to have food and clean drinking water, but it’s up to the people themselves and their governments to step up to the plate. No more hand-outs, teach people how to fish instead of giving it to them.

Which sounds great if you don’t know any better. The main reason the UN can’t agree on a definition of terrorism is that many of its member states, most notably the US but also Russia, Israel, Syria .. also Britain, France and others, are perpetrating state terrorism on one level or another.
Of course poverty can’t be eradicated if you don’t try. That goes without saying. And with that kind of attitude it’s pretty obvious. Such is the arguments of the right wing crowd. Liberals or conservatives as they sometimes call themselves. And as if it wasn’t enough that we don’t do enough to help poorer nations, we also have the guts to blame the people there for being poor. Granted they may not always have the best leadership but to blame the people is just outrageous. And one should remember that usually these leaders are “our kind of leaders.” We put them there directly or indirectly. And need I remind people that many if not all struggling nations are wrecked by European and US imperialism. We created the problem. Strip mined their countries, turned their people into slaves, destabilized entire regions and now we are too stingy to even help them get back on their feet. Granted it wont be easy or quick or cheap. We saw to that. But that is only part of the problem. As we offer our aid or not, we also maintain a colonial hand over these people. In the case of Africa, which is also the poorest continent and the one I know best, we, as in nation states and organizations, decided what kind of aid they needed. Not the people of the African nations. In fact, they softly objected but dared not take a stand for fears of having the aid cut off altogether. In essence, to use the wordplay of the commentator, WE gave them the fishes when they wanted to learn how to fish all along. And by we I mean mostly the US which controls most of the aid through its various proxy organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. To think that the US of all players would give them the ability to fend for themselves is preposterous. There is a little thing called intellectual property that prevents that. Something that the US is the international champion for. Granted, fishing isn’t IP protected (yet) but in any example beyond the infantile rhetoric of right wing pundits, it applies. Teaching people in this context will mean billions of dollars of licensing technology and knowledge that is protected by IP laws. So in summary, the US has wrapped this specific proposal in a packaging of lies and disinformation. It’s more than just some libertarian ideology at work. The question that remains of course is if the pundits understand this when they cheerlead for the US. Probably not.

Other talking points include: “African promiscuity is the problem - consider spreading the words of God”, “Sweden is envious of the US”, “Sweden hates the US” and “Sweden’s representatives didn’t read the US proposal and / or are envious because they didn’t think of all the great ideas that the US is now proposing.”

As for jealousy and hatred, it seems from a quick a unsophisticated review of the material at hand that it was the the US which launched into a preemptive tirade against the material, which is now being defended by one of those that helped pen it. How that amounts to hatred towards the US is beyond me. If one were to point fingers, it is far more likely US contempt for the world and especially the “socialist” nations of northern Europe that maintain this dreaded 0.7% GDP foreign aid figure and other “commie” ideas about justice and equality. Because they are the “Paris subway” in the Bolshevik discourse or the “village of indomitable Gauls” in the midst of the Roman Empire. Not only do they exist and remind the world that there are alternatives but they also function quite well and continue to export their ideals. The best way to overcome such nuisances is perhaps not to prove them wrong (because that may not be possible) but to shrink their sphere of influence by constantly hindrance, showing by example the limitation of this “competing” ideology.

Entry 226 filed under: UN. This entry was posted 3 years, 3 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.