The first thing we must learn is that, at the very least, we must do no wrong. In other words, let us stop aid that keeps bloodthirsty kleptocrats in power and destroys African societies. Then we can think again. Trade, of course. But what else? What kind of investment is possible that is not money simply handed over to those kleptocrats or NGOs?

I am reading Dambila Moyo’s “Dead Aid”, which has very strong views on the subject, though the book itself is a little curate’s eggish. I shall certainly blog about it when I finish.

Helen, our good intentions seem to be the bricks such leaders use to pave the way to their hells; if we weren’t around, would the leaders be caught in the quicksand of their own making and disappear? Would they be any less effective at starving their populations? I’m curious. I’m pretty certain that cultivating dependence is a really really bad idea. Assasinating leaders bent on democide certainly has its drawbacks – we probably shouldn’t feel sufficiently omniscient for such actions (although it doesn’t take too much omniscience to predict the trajectory of Zimbabwe any more than the trajectory of Venzuela). Your outrage seems justified – I’m just wondering what options do we have other than ignoring suffering or funneling aid through tyrants. I guess we can funnel it through the UN, but that seems to merely increase suffering, as we see in the UN refugee camps.

Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t but since they raided every other food outlet and routinely steal all the aid that comes in, this is all irrelevant. What is outrageous is that we are still sending aid to keep that mega-criminal and his equally criminal friends and relations in power.

On the other hand, I really do not think this has anything to do with Greenpeace.

Greenpeace has been on the forefront of the vilification of GM foods. They waged a successful campaign to block rice engineered to produce vitamin A thus condemning hundreds of thousands of people a year to blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

I would bet money that if you queried Mugabe’s thuglets about their rationales they would whip out at least one quote from Greenpeace.

true enough. and how many people have also died prior to “leftist” ideology because of Rightist imperialism, under various conquering empires, such as Portual, France, Great Britain, and Spain, and Germany?

Interesting that you associate imperialism with the American right when in fact the American right as defined by the pro-business Republicans had a century long history of opposing colonialism. the primary drivers of colonialism were the fading aristocratic classes. Worse from your point of view, leftist such as Marxist were rabidly pro-colonialism until the 1920′s. They thought that colonialism would accelerate the evolution of all cultures to the communist end state.

More importantly, imperialism saved lives in most cases. Most areas of the world were engaged in continuos states of warfare with imperialism put an end to. Imperialism tied remote areas into the planetary trading network which eliminated natural famines. Education, health care and representative governments all increased under imperialism.

I think it very telling that you have to go back a century or more to try to find and example in which non-leftist could conceivably done as much damage as contemporary leftist. Says a lot about who is doing the real damage now, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, I really do not think this has anything to do with Greenpeace. There is no need for knee-jerk reactions on either side. Mugabe’s thugs do not have enough food themselves so they will raid anything that looks edible. What on earth makes you think that any of that genetically modified food is imported or if it is, gets to any of the people who need it. Zimbabwe, let me remind you, was a net exporter of various things, including food before Mugabe really went nuts.