"Victory for millions" posted by Richard Seymour

US Military Aid to Tiny Country in Levant: $3bn a year.

New US Aid for Continent Adjacent to Tiny Country in Levant: $1.75bn over the next decade .

Okay, I'm a disgrace. I should be whooping, hollering, moistening at the thought of all those skinny African babies finally imbibing some milk or flour or something. I should be wailing with Marvin Gaye: #Save the baaaabeeeees, oh wontcha saaaaave the babeees, alla the children...#. Etc. But let's be clear about this - even that $1.75bn is bound to be an inflation (ie, it will contain an amount of recycled money, and will have all sorts of extremist strings attached). Doubtless, some one will be stupid enough to mention if I don't the $15bn over five years that the Bush administration said it was committing to Africa for AIDs reduction programmes. First of all, that was reduced almost immediately from $3bn a year to $2bn a year by Republicans in Congress. Second, a third of the total was earmarked for "abstinence-only" teaching about AIDS. Third, much of the aid is delegated to religious groups who may select and reject proposals as they see fit; and a hefty chunk ($1.3bn in the first year alone) was taken out of government control and given to a private 'board' who would mete out the cash on the basis of countries demonstrating achievement in neoliberal reforms. Fourth, the guy they put in charge of administering the, Randall L. Tobias, is someone with no experience in dealing with AIDS, but who has a background in the big pharmaceutical companies - he will ensure that the money comes back to US pharmaceuticals as recipients are obliged to renounce their right to buy generic alternatives to the patented drugs. (More here ).

The tendency for both British and US governments has always been to concoct a programme that will generate a decent press-release and some pretty headlines, but which disintegrates into precious little on investigation. According to Action Aid , between 60 and 90% of all announced aid is "phantom" rather than real, with much of it being revealed to be internal recycling of money and misdirected spending (strings attached). The possibility that this is recycled cash was sort of already given away by Gordon Brown:

For the UK, the commitment to debt cancellation will cost about £470 million a year, expenditure which Brown said had already been budgeted for.

Indeed, the Telegraph reports that "Most of the money has already been allocated as part of Britain's unilateral international development budget." It also notes that "Debt cancellation will be linked to economic and political reforms".

Now, there's a great deal of horse shit spoken by right-wingers about how debt isn't really a problem, and how the real issue is corruption. Peter Sissons on the BBC this morning was having a nice friendly chat with Andrew Neil , who insisted that as the debt wasn't really repaid it wasn't a problem, and that African leaders were so corrupt that they had $140bn collectively stored in British bank accounts. There was a Brass Eye moment when some other thick turd said something about debt relief going into terrorists' bank accounts, which is about the funniest thing I have ever heard on the BBC and certainly blows that crock of shit 'Dead Ringers' out of the water.

Let's talk figures:

From 1980 to 2000, sub-Saharan Africa's total foreign debt rose from $60 billion to $206 billion, and the ratio of debt to GDP rose from 23 percent to 66 percent. Hence Africa now repays more than it receives. In 1980 loan inflows of $9.6 billion were comfortably higher than the debt repayment outflow of $3.2 billion. But by 2000 only $3.2 billion flowed in while $9.8 billion was repaid, leaving a net financial deficit of $6.2 billion. [More here ].

So, debt is an issue, and the human cost could be about 5 million children each year . But the second thing to bear in mind is that the whole reason these bad debts have been accrued is because those issuing the loans have relied on the corruption of ruling elites. Aid and loans are used as political tools by the West - in particular, it is worth remembering how food aid was cut off to Chile under Allende, as well as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam after the US had finally to give up its imperial subventions there. It has been used to impose policy on a whole range of issues, most notably the Structural Adjustment Programmes , which have destroyed many economies. As Susan George has pointed out:

Debt is an efficient tool. It ensures access to other peoples' raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms. Dozens of countries must compete for shrinking export markets and can export only a limited range of products because of Northern protectionism and their lack of cash to invest in diversification. Market saturation ensues, reducing exporters' income to a bare minimum while the North enjoys huge savings. The IMF cannot seem to understand that investing in ... [a] healthy, well-fed, literate population ... is the most intelligent economic choice a country can make. Susan George, A Fate Worse Than Debt, (1990).

It is also worth pointing out that, according to Jubilee 2000 , "if creditor countries were serious about these commitments, they would have to cancel almost $500 billion in debt, and additionally increase aid by $28 billion per year". What they have done is make a deal which, even if 60-90% of it isn't fabricated, recycled, or wasted, actually comes to the same total as the US trade deficit .

The principle that dishonest creditor nations should be obliged to make do what the billions they've been paid already is a good one. But they still want to use this to impose neoliberalism and the opening of markets. To its credit, Make Poverty History has stipulated that aid and debt relief should not be tied to extremist political projects and, in a nice turn of phrase, have said that "the EU must drop its demand that former European colonies open their markets and give more rights to big companies". However, there is a danger that the movement can be coopted by the free market right. The fact that self-deluding ideologues like Jeffrey Sachs are seriously lauded by clapped out pop stars like Bono is worrying enough. And Bono did once ask for Blair and Brown to become the "Lennon and McCartney of progressive geopolitics". Unto which: "At least that would give us a fifty-fifty chance of Blair being shot". But Oxfam's recent behaviour and output details yet another curve in the trajectory of NGOs over the last thirty years toward becoming dependent on states and making themselves more ideologically compatible with them.

And that is why it is important to keep the movement a grassroots one, not a celebrity-led campaign. At best, people like Bob Geldof can amplify an already existing mood and voice. But this movement owes more to the success of the anticapitalist and antiwar protests across the world than it does to Kate Moss and Nelson Mandela. I wouldn't expect the intellectual amoebas fronting Live 8 to grasp that, but what matters is how we as Marxists, socialists, anticapitalists and radicals relate to a much broader movement than we have lately been very used to. We have to talk about Bolivia , Ethiopia , and Venezuela , but also privatisation and neoliberalism in Britain and Europe . For those who think Brown represents a serious alternative to Blair, it will be worth pointing out that his International Finance Facility is basically a form of international PFI. We can also talk about the fact that this government is run by utter bastards . Finally, we should bring Iraq and Palestine to Gleneagles as well, whether the Lothian Police like it or not. In other words, we should argue that poverty will never be history until capitalism and imperialism are history. Trade will not be just until it is democratic. And we will never escape the oppressive omnipresence of Bono and Bob Geldof until we have burst the integument of capital asunder, once and for all.