Posted on 07/30/2005 9:12:44 PM PDT by Panerai
Another african country that can't take care of itself and needs white help....What a shockeroo!!!!!!
That's the total of their wine profit for the year. They will be giving the aid in euros because it is only the French buying the wine.
Wasn't there a Drudge headline recently where it stated something to the tune of "220bn has been seized by corrupt Nigerian leaders over the past 40 years...which is equal to the entire sum spent on Africa by the United Kingdom in the past 40 years". So I guess what France is saying, that as a corrupt country themselve, they must assist other corrupt countries.../rolls eyes
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/25/wnig25.xml
There you go, found it!
Yeah, you go France, through more money at a corrupt government...way to go! You should be soooo proud of yourself, thinking you are helping the needy. /rolls eyes
"I'm happy to see that France is the biggest donor, but other countries must do the same," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said after flying in to northern Niger for a brief visit to a mud village where France had sent boxes of medicine."
I'm confused.....I thought they were STARVING and needed FOOD.
No democratic republic has ever suffered a famine. Socialism and kleptocracy is what starves people.
What a humanitarian that Jacques is.....
well, niger is a democratic republic.
my point is that the shortage of food was caused (in the short term at least) by a plague of locusts last august and september. government policies may have exacerbated the problem, but niger isn't a socialist kleptocratic state. mainly because there ain't much to steal in niger.
the hammer and sickle isn't exactly flying high over niamey
That's mostly a chicken-and-egg argument. There are natural resources in Niger (uranium, coal, and petroleum), but with the exception of the first, there's been little to no development of them. Not having the political conditions for a thriving private sector will to that to you.
Fruck you Fance. It was your freakin' colony. You don't have these problems in formerly British colonies.
fair enough, but that speaks more to the sins of past governments than the current one.
Is there anything France touches that doesn't turn to sh!t? (Africa, IndoChina, Haiti...)
Give me a team of mercenaries and I'll solve the famine problem in Niger. The problem is leadership, not lack of food.
Dammit! I thought Bolton went to the UN to solve all these problems, and look here, he can't even solve the Niger problem in his first half day! He's got no juice, because he doesn't have the blessing of Ted Kennedy, Reid, and Kerry!
U.S. farmers have to deal with drought, insects, and West Nile viruses. So...why isn't there famine here in America?
All of the problems in Africa are caused by tin-pot dictators and U.N. meddling.
perhaps, but when you say a country is a kleptocracy, you have to prove things are being stolen.
America is a huge country and US farmers work in different climates. Its rare to have simultaneous droughts in California, the Great Plains, the Ohio Valley and the Southeast.
However, we have an excellent irrigation and transportation infrastructure and so while a drought will drive up prices, food is still available. In Niger, most agriculture is rain-fed and there are very few reservoirs for irrigation. Being just south of the Sahara desert, its underground aquifers are weak.
If you look in your history books, you'll see that famines happened every 10 or 20 years on the East Coast in the 18th and early 19th century. Better roads and better shipping allowed for interstate commerce that made weak crops an economic issue, but not a famine issue.
The fruits of eurotrash colonialism are again being brought to the fore.
Aid workers have blamed donor nations ...
And the American middle class taxpayer is again left holding the bag.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.