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Friday, May 27, 2005

Responses

Ingrid will be pleased to see the latest moves on Sudan. There does seem to be a serious attempt to help the African nations develop an interventionist/peacekeeping force. NATO logistical support will be particularly important.

Zimbabwe is now in dire trouble. Watch South Africa on this. They have tried the appeasement approach (and I don't use that word in its derogatory sense) but I suspect they will have to intervene more directly if things continue as they are.

Dan, I am very sympathetic to your comments on the technology of voting. We have got by in the past because people did not abuse the system.(With certain exceptions in Northern Ireland). That may be changing.

Certainly we do not meet the criteria laid down by such groups as International Security and Co-operation in Europe or by the UN or the Commonwealth. If the prison sentences given recently have the effect of stopping abuse then we can probably continue our fairly relaxed system but I think we do need a reform.

A joint Select Committee (Deputy Prime Minister and Constitutional Affairs) looked at this just before the last election. I only made one contribution because I was chairing another committee at the time. I asked that we reviewed the whole voting system to bring it up to the international standards that we encourage elsewhere. Alas, They did not accept my advice!

Hello Clive, Yes it is pleasing to see Nato's chief attending talks on Darfur in western Sudan. But it is difficult to understand why at the same talks, when the African Union requested $466 million cash to triple the number of its troops in Darfur, international donors - so far - have only offered $300 million. It seems the balance may be made up by the EU or in contributions by Nato. It's a bit underwhelming. Pledges don't always materialise into hard cash. The longer this goes on, the more costly it will be to feed what amounts now to three million people in Darfur alone, bringing the figure to four million displaced who are totally dependent on aid for years to come simply because they can't return home and plant their food because of lack of security.

In April there was a donors conference in Oslo where 4.5 billion dollars was pledged for southern Sudan for development aid following the signing of the north-south peace deal Jan 9. Most of it is dependent on peace in Darfur but news reports are now coming through of people in desperate need of food and water in southern Sudan because aid/funding is not materliasing. News reports don't explain how much cash is actually allocated for aid or why these people are still suffering so badly for lack of water pumps and basic food. Mothers are feeding boiled leaves to their babies. It seems cancellation of debts are counted as aid money.

Sorry to sound so negative. On the surface, recent press reports sound good but when you dig deeper and see it from the refugees point of view, it doesn't look good at all. The rains are coming again soon. Rebels could start violence at any time in Eastern Sudan, people in the Nuba mountains southern Sudan are getting disenchanted waiting so long to feel the benefit of the peace deal. There's anarchy almost everywhere. Not a single Janjaweed has been arrested. One of the leaders Musa Hilal is freely walking around Darfur preaching peace. The African Union has 2,270 soldiers on the ground - and Darfur has waited eight months now for the extra 1,000 troops to arrive. Yes violence may have appeared to have lessened because there's hardly anyone left to hassle and kill! They've all been driven away for the West to take care of. As soon as they try to return home the Janjaweed turn up and attack again.

I'd like to see some women in charge in Khartoum. I'm serious. I read of an experiment once where they studied an all boy school class versus a 50-50 boy/girl class. The all boy class turned out to be a pretty unruly rum lot. In the other class, girls challenged the boys bullying and violent behaviour and the boys changed their ways because they found out if they didn't, they wouldn't be accepted by the group or get a mate. :-)

btw According to a news report from Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's health is failing - apparently, confirmation of the 81-year-old leader's health problems came on Thursday morning when he saw a prominent cardiologist at the Diagnostic Heart Centre in the Avenues.

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/ill.12694.html

Sadly, it looks like nobody else here is concerned about aid and Africa. Since I left the above comment, the UN's World Food Programme announced six million people across the Sudan now need feeding. The point of my commenting here is to say the longer the Sudan crisis goes on, the more expensive it will get, and it is the taxpayers within the international community who are footing the bill.

Recently someone commented at my blog with this:

"Can governments (stewards) of countries that prosper in the global economy be expected to donate their people's taxes, voluntarily and endlessly, to governments and international organisations with other priorities?

The priorities of human nature are apparent in a US book review: 'The Future for Investors'. Excerpts are:

"With a diminishing number of workers to support pension plans, tomorrow's seniors have a lot to fret about"

"the outlook for productivity growth and Americans' future living standards are bright. Unfortunately, productivity growth does little to alleviate the burden of the sharply rising number of retirees facing a diminishing number of workers to contribute to pension plans."

"investors must go international. The U.S. does not have a monopoly on the "tried and true" companies that I recommend. . . Good stock performances will not be limited to firms headquartered in China and India or even the U.S., but to any firm that takes advantage of growing markets and provides trustworthy products. Since more than half of the equity capital is now headquartered outside our country, investors must diversify to take advantage of the coming global growth."

Therefore attracting investment looks like the one-size-fits-all priority for governments. Where this is leading isn't important (over the cliff?) - just step on the gas. "

[My response to the comment was, it all boils down to UN reform]