Re: Economic and Political Agenda

Mike Lauchlan (mailto:Mike.Lauchlan@CGY.VALMET.COM)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:29:15 -0600

Message-ID:  <6FDD66FAFA34D111B8AE0000929B7CAC0102E84A@misnt2.cgy.valmet.com>
Date:         Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:29:15 -0600
From: Mike Lauchlan <mailto:Mike.Lauchlan@CGY.VALMET.COM>
Subject:      Re: Economic and Political Agenda
To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU

        > Surely you don't think the EU, for example, is spending millions
of ECU on > food aid and technical / material assistance on countries like
Liberia or > Guatemala just because they don't have a better place to spend it
? Of > course USAID has political and economic agenda built into its
foreign aid - > what nation doesn't ?

Interesting interpretation of "aid" though, isn't it? I was always under the impression (as an outside observer) that aid workers were the idealistic of the world, believing their work might result in a more even distribution of opportunity throughout the world. What I'm hearing is here is that many of them are simply corporate missionaries, prepping the locals to become happy consumers of goods from the developed nations. So much for idealism. Sounds alot like entrenching the status quo.

Mike Lauchlan Calgary

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