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[align=center]ThisSCUMBAG is the one of the most atrocious but this is more or less the norm except in places like Ghana,Mozambique,and a few others.That monster Mugabe is bulldozing people's homes like he's the "black hitler ten fold".Look at Obsanjo with his fake ass "anti corruption" agenda and 'state police/ex soldiers' teorrorizing the population....He know if he pushed too hard then 'civil war' might break out.These type of power egocentric and tribalistleaders care nothing about the 'state' and many of them are proud like Nguema that says “There is no poverty in Guinea" because "the people are used to living in a different way" which includes very little public transportation,no daily newspapers,and only 1% of government expenditure going to healthcare.I think very few if any countries should be recommended for debt relief until they get their shit together.[/align]

West accused of concealing farm subsidies
Oxfam says EU and US are exploiting loopholes and using creative accounting to avoid real trade concessions to developing countries
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Wednesday June 15, 2005

Guardian
The European Union and the United States are paying out billions of pounds in secret subsidies to their farmers as they exploit every available loophole to avoid real concessions to the developing world in the current round of global trade talks, Oxfam said today.
In a report designed to put pressure on rich western countries in the buildup to next month's G8 summit at Gleneagles, the campaign group accused Washington and Brussels of using creative accounting and the "Enronisation" of their accounts to continue with their protectionist regimes.
"The EU and the US are cheating on the poor," said Liz Stuart, author of the report. "They are telling poor countries that they have to open their markets in return for cuts in farm subsidies in the west but in reality they are cooking the books with devastating consequences for the poor."
The current round of trade liberalisation talks commit the EU and the US to cut back on export subsidies, which allow the west to dump its excess agricultural produce at bargain-basement prices in the rest of the world.
Oxfam said, however, that the US and the EU were using the rules of the World Trade Organisation to disguise the real level of their payments to farmers. The US was paying 200 times more in export support than it declared, while the EU is paying four times more. The proposals being discussed in Geneva in an attempt to secure a trade deal by the end of the year would result in the EU being able to increase spending on trade-distorting subsidies by around £20bn a year, and the US by £5bn.
"Aid and debt are essential, but without the vital third leg of the stool - trade - we won't get poverty reduction in Africa. This is the Enronisation of the Doha round of trade negotiations. Rich countries have used creative accounting to cheat poor countries into giving up their market access in return for nothing," Ms Stuart said.
The Oxfam report came at a sensitive time, with the future of Europe's common agricultural policy at the centre of talks in Paris between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. The prime minister sought to fend off French calls for a reduction in Britain's EU rebate by demanding big cuts in the subsidies paid to French farmers.
According to Oxfam, however, any cuts in export subsidy offered by the EU and US in the trade negotiations will be more than matched by increases in domestic support for farmers which would have the same distorting effect on trade, and harm poor countries.
According to Oxfam's report, A Round for Free, rich countries have been redefining rather than reducing subsidies at the WTO. As a result, overall farm support in developed countries has not changed since 1986, and still stands at over $250bn (£140bn) per year in real terms.
The report alleges that despite pledges by rich countries to eliminate export subsidies, this is unlikely to happen until at least 2016, and large levels of disguised payments will remain. It reveals the US pays out the equivalent of $6.6bn in hidden subsidies a year to its farmers - 200 times more than it declares to the WTO. The EU pays $5.2bn, four times the reported amount.
"While rich countries have apparently agreed to get rid of the most nefarious subsidies of all - export subsidies - in reality they will be able to keep the bulk of their other forms of support that act as a hidden export subsidy or lead to the overproduction of many agricultural products of interest to developing countries," the report said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,38...103685,00.html

A truckload of nonsense
The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket
George Monbiot
Tuesday June 14, 2005

Guardian
An aura of sanctity is descending upon the world's most powerful men. On Saturday the finance ministers from seven of the G8 nations (Russia was not invited) promised to cancel the debts the poorest countries owe to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hand that holds the sword has been stayed by angels: angels with guitars rather than harps.
Who, apart from the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, could deny that debt relief is a good thing? Never mind that much of this debt - money lent by the World Bank and IMF to corrupt dictators - should never have been pursued in the first place. Never mind that, in terms of looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich. Some of the poorest countries have been paying more for debt than for health or education. Whatever the origins of the problem, that is obscene.
You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers' statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must "tackle corruption, boost private-sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign".
These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.
That's the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west's demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of "good governance". Their armies, as the UN has shown, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 4 million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars' worth of natural resources. Yet Britain, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.
The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials that his troops have stolen from the DRC. "Corrupt" is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won't do what they're told.
Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN convention against corruption, but none is a member of the G8. Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey. Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island's clients, many of which sit in the FTSE 100 index, you begin to understand.
The idea, swallowed by most commentators, that the conditions our governments impose help to prevent corruption is laughable. To qualify for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise most of its state-owned companies before it had any means of regulating their sale. A sell-off that should have raised $500m for the Ugandan exchequer instead raised $2m. The rest was nicked by government officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that - to qualify for the debt-relief programme the G8 has now extended - the Ugandan government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.
And here we meet the real problem with the G8's conditionalities. They do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say "good governance" and "eliminating impediments to private investment", what they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for western money.
Let's stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 80s, the IMF and World Bank forced it to impose "user fees" for basic healthcare and primary education. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF -which the G8 nations control - were furious. At the donors' meeting in April 2001, the head of the bank's delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a "bad investment".
There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their public services and obtain their commodities at rock-bottom prices. The conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.
That's not the only conflict. The G8 finance ministers' statement insists that the World Bank and IMF will monitor the indebted countries' progress, and decide whether they are fit to be relieved of their burden. The World Bank and IMF, of course, are the agencies which have the most to lose from this redemption. They have a vested interest in ensuring that debt relief takes place as slowly as possible.
Attaching conditions like these to aid is bad enough. It amounts to saying: "We will give you a trickle of money if you give us the crown jewels." Attaching them to debt relief is in a different moral league: "We will stop punching you in the face if you give us the crown jewels." The G8's plan for saving Africa is little better than an extortion racket.
Do you still believe our newly sanctified leaders have earned their haloes? If so, you have swallowed a truckload of nonsense. Yes, they should cancel the debt. But they should cancel it unconditionally.
· www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,38...103677,00.html

[align=center]The only reason the West and even the Chineseis able to exploit is because the African leaders are mostly tribalist and egocentric repressive relics that hold down their people to get collectively f**ked by the outsiders for a few shillings.....[/align]

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You are right the likes ofMugabe are "scumbag", so was Mobutu study closely who bought him to power and was his close Allies

Aminatta Forna: the West must own up to its part in African corruption


The Independent (UK), March 9, 2005


Writing for the British newspaper The Independent last week, well-known memoirist and reporter Aminatta Forna – the daughter of Mohammed Forna, a Sierra Leone cabinet minister who was executed under the notorious dictatorship of Siaka Stevens – described how Western lenders had encouraged government spending sprees in Africa despite evidence of corruption and mismanagement. Forna said when her father resigned his post as finance minister in the early 1970s, he detailed several instances of deals with Western lenders for loans involving suspect development projects that directly contravened agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Mohammed Forna's resignation letter, published in Sierra Leone's national press, urged Western nations to prevent Stevens' spending spree by cutting funding and warned the loans could never be repaid. The letter went unheeded by creditors, as did a memo Aminatta Forna later turned up written by a junior staff member at the World Bank, which questioned – in the light of her father's revelations – whether the World Bank should go ahead with a proposed loan to Sierra Leone. But the Bank went ahead with the loan and Siaka Stevens continued to subvert foreign funds to his own ends. In response to the release of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa report, Forna said she welcomed the Commission's focus on Western as well as African accountability for corruption in Africa. "For too long, when it comes to corruption in Africa, the West's position has been 'do as I say not as I do,'" she said. "In Sierra Leone and other countries, debts were racked up knowingly by African ministers and Western lenders in the full knowledge that they would not be repaid. This was not mere irresponsible borrowing, but planned larceny." It is for this reason said Forna, and "not bleeding heart sentiments," that the debts should be written off.
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=12588

US's Lugar to propose multilateral bank reforms


by www.noticias.info, March 14, 2005


US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar will soon propose reforms to encourage increased accountability at multilateral financial institutions. The reforms grow out of Sen. Lugar's investigation into allegations of corruption in projects funded by the multilateral banks. Lugar has been examining the banks' anti-corruption strategies through a combination of public hearings, private meetings, written interrogatories and visits by staff aides to bank development projects overseas. Testimony has come from bank employees, "whistle-blowers," nongovernmental organizations and academics. The committee plans to hold another public hearing – featuring the U.S. executive directors to the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – sometime in April. Aides said the committee's probe has prompted activity in other countries where additional inquiries are underway on a wide range of projects. One example is the Italian parliament which is now looking at reforms it might undertake in dealings with the banks.
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=12616

[align=center]The point is not how "difficult" it is but what must be done.These misleaders that run over the people need to be exposed and held up for condemnation/ridicule.Why are you scared of people like that punk mugabe that bulldozes the homes of people that he disagrees with?People need to stop being scared of these monsters and fight them with the same ferocity that you would any foreign invader.Imagine if Bush sent out some people to tear down the homes of those in blue state areas.People would be taking up arms against the government.There are enough people in Africa like minded that would come down to fight these sold out people just like the 'Jahidist' come in to fight America...[/align]
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Mr_T wrote: [quote]

[align=center]The point is not how "difficult" it is but what must be done.These misleaders that run over the people need to be exposed and held up for condemnation/ridicule.Why are you scared of people like that punk mugabe that bulldozes the homes of people that he disagrees with?People need to stop being scared of these monsters and fight them with the same ferocity that you would any foreign invader.Imagine if Bush sent out some people to tear down the homes of those in blue state areas.People would be taking up arms against the government.There are enough people in Africa like minded that would come down to fight these sold out people just like the 'Jahidist' come in to fight America...[/align]


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[align=left]"These misleaders that run over the people need to be exposed and held up for condemnation/ridicule"[/align]

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[align=left]If you read a number of African newspapers, condemnation and ridicule of corrupt leadersis a great crusade which often leads to imprisonment and torture.[/align]
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"Q: An independent media in Kenya during Moi’s regime was extremely useful in giving the people an alternative voice, how much do you think this could play a part in post-conflict Sierra Leone and are you involved in this in any way? [/align]
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A: Sierra Leone has an established and historical tradition of newspapers and reporting. It has an extremely vociferous media and vocal civil society. This has been effective in some ways but I would suggest that this isn’t enough. The problem with created states is that there is no bottom up growth of democracy. People cannot afford to pay taxes, they don’t have a stake in their own government and the government doesn’t need tax to sustain itself. A strong civil society is important but not enough.