Sunday, February 22, 2009
Running Interference
Leaving aside for the moment the white man's burden assumptions behind the big business of foreign aid, Center for Global Development President Nancy Birdsall -- speaking at the 2006 Hilton Humanitarian Prize Symposium on Democracy and Development -- begins by stating that it's hard to say whether democratic governance or market economics should be the starting point for social sustainability. Assuming this incoherence to be typical of the NGOs and institutional bureaucrats milking this industry, I can only respond that it's no wonder that so many despots are dependent on the graft from this aid to purchase patronage and silence dissent. Her comment that better coordination of government aid with transnational social investment, by such notorious corporate criminals as Coca-Cola, demonstrates why innocents like Birdsall are promoted by the aristocratic class to run interference for criminal enterprises posing as humanitarian missions.
