Re: If I expressed my opinions in the world at large there would be many wanting to hang me from the nearest tree.
And understandably so! In Europe, your opinion might appeal to our blue-collar rednecks who are themselves struggling to make a living and hold to their jobs... It's small wonder they get tired of watching "third world tearjerkers" --the Tsunami hoopla, the earthquake in Pakistan, famine in Ethiopia, ebola in Congo, you name it. Meanwhile the Belgian government had to hatch a "heating bill rebate" --dubbed "le chèque mazout" in French-- so that thousands of Belgian households can keep warm this winter... and that's on top of kitchen soups handed out by Les Restos du Coeur.
Yet, as you're well aware of it, Belgium, like all other European countries, is not run by a Soviet (ie "council") of rednecks but by a coterie of old, educated, worldly families who've understood that, if Europe is to play a leading role in world affairs, she'd better care about the plight of Africa, the restiveness of the Arab world, the frustration of Russia and Eastern Europe, the growing assertiveness of East Asia, and the eery insanity of the US... Somehow, Europe feels compelled to "splurge" aid on Africa because, unlike China, she lacks the double-digit growth rate to trade with Africa on a scale similar to that of China. The Chinese are increasingly involved in Africa because they genuinely, economically, indeed rationally, need it! Contrariwise, Europe, with near-zero GDP growth, sluggish demographics and a dwindling industrial base, can make do without Africa's riches. Hence Europe's challenge: how to keep a foothold in Africa when economic necessity no longer calls for it? And that's where the NGO people enter the picture, that's where you need the merry French doctors and the whole nexus of the "aid industry"... That's the price --a paltry one-- Europe has to pay if she doesn't want to find herself utterly displaced by China in the coming years, if she doesn't want to wind up as a lily-white, xenophobic, inward-minded, old-age asylum, in short, if Europe doesn't want to look like the Israeli garrison-state writ large! A Continent ruled and inhabited by self-righteous freaks who feel besieged and threatened by hordes of subhuman barbarians....
Re: ...and the black politicians are jetting around the world to conferences where they attempt to embarrass the developed countries into giving them more aid -- for more jetting around the world. African Renaissance is underway.
As far as I'm concerned, I would rather have African politicians jetting around the world from one WTO venue to the next than European and US warmongers jetting the world over, huckstering their "global war on terror" scam or a plan for another war against Iran....
Gus |
