www.whiteband.org

Go to this website, please. Go through it, for a bit, I'll wait here...................................................................(Currently Listening to Dolly Dagger by Hendrix-I'm on my yearly Hendrix pilgrimage). So did you like what you saw, did you go all glassy eyed, or did you surf to the latest porn site or hit youtube? Well I’m going to get all professor rock on your ass and give you what I think is some needed clarity on why Chris Martin is in Latin America and Bono is in Africa and why at the first opportunity I have I will join them to help make the world get better.

This is a primer on the most complicated issue facing humanity this century, one that encompasses, economics, the environment, education, health, culture, race, history and war to name a few. The study of international development is not for the faint of heart or the easily frustrated. Development is EVERYTHING. We are talking about how 2/3rds of the world is fucked and how do we fix that. I went to school for this stuff and still can’t wrap my head around all this issues. It’s like trying to put water in a box with only one hand. To quantify the issues for most is useless and should be left really to the experts who work for the UNDP, CIDA and the like. So what is international development? Well here is a layman rock n’roll guy’s executive summary.

Around about the time Ghandi was teaching us the better way, the world was essentially starting to grow up out of the shadow of the First World War (read Paris 1919 for more on this) and its ripple effect. The big nations (UK, France, Germany, America etc) started to realize that the party was starting to end and colonialism was becoming tiresome-all that screaming about democracy and human rights was just so annoying during supper and tea. So when Great Britain finally packed up their trunks and let the poor Indians have it their way- thus began the process of de-colonization as the developed nations cut their losses returned at least partial control of dozens of countries to the people and national governments, and more frequently military dictatorships sponsored by the departing country (America may have left places like Guatemala but they wanted to make sure that Del Monte wouldn’t have trouble doing business). Independence movements sprouted like weeds all over ‘the less fortunate world’ and everyone from Nehru to Castro became the voice of the new emerging Third World. Wow, good times. Well it was like a party and the morning after scenario. Although many countries had a new found independence and ability to shape their destiny they were also faced with the reality that there countries were built around servicing the needs of the colonial power, great at exporting, shipping and farming, but their own economies were in ruins with little or no social development, civil society and infrastructure. So what did they do? Well, borrowed money and lots of it from the countries that had just left them in the sorry states they were in. What else did they do? Well they did what they could do the best-export the stuff they have a lot of. And to who? The countries that had just left them. Wow. What is the saying the more things change, the more they stay the same?

Well, this arrangement continued from the Kennedy years to Ronny Reagan. What also happened was the borders that were so efficiently drawn by the Generals of the colonial wars and the subsequent treaty negotiations were ripped apart as long dormant tribalism exploded in Africa and dozens of new countries, and old ones that had been eradicated or renamed came alive. Outside of religion nothing has caused more war than the fight over the stuff we stand on and grow our food in-land. Wars are dirty expensive things that take over the entire economy, destroy families, communities, history, and the stuff that makes the countries tick. It also kills the young, the people with new ideas and the piss and vinegar needed to make change. Wars leave open wounds on the land and on the fabric of a country were disease and famine thrive. So while people fight over who gets to control the land-it and the people who live on it die. Senseless. What happened in the 1980s to make this lovely situation even sweeter was essentially the rich government’s version of the repo man. The billions upon billions of dollars of loans wracked up by both reputable and corrupt governments of the developing world came due. We all know what that feeling is like getting that nasty piece of official business in the mail saying pay us now or say goodbye to your credit. Most of the countries presented with these letters were in absolutely no position to repay them. Can you imagine the interest on a million dollars amortized over 20 years? F#ck. Ya, my thoughts exactly. So many countries entered into arrangements whereby debt was to be reduced or serviced by way of something called ‘structural adjustment’. This innocuous term has been responsible for the sliver in the wound, the insult to injury for most of the developing world. Debt was to be reduced and new funds allocated on how a country best reduced ‘the fat’ and made their economy and government more ‘efficient’. See, the neoclassical economic school of thought was just hitting its stride and the best place to test the assumptions of neoconservatives was the laboratory of the poor with countries that have places like the City of God. Cut your spending on useless things like education, environmental protection and healthcare and will give you a grant for a nice dam project or factory park that will do nicely for Volkswagen production.

The IMF (the International Monetary Fund, not the Impossible Mission Force) and other so called benevolent agencies have for years waged a quiet economic war on countries too poor, desperate or corrupt to do anything but kowtow to it and the banks that support it. This situation has essentially stalled vast parts of the world in a post-World War II state of development and fostered the growth of crime and corruption and euthanized the states ability to fight the downward spiral of economic collapse in places like Argentina and the forest fire of Aids in central Africa. Think about your own house. You’re a new family fresh out of school, new job, huge credit debt, little support from mum and dad, huge student debt and your living in a rickety old apartment. Your finances are dedicated to food, shelter and debt servicing. Not much else gets done. No new clothes. Your health gets ignored, the place is dirty and you get depressed and stuck in a rut. 20 years later you have nothing to show for it and you have passed on your lack of riches and bright outlook on life to your brethren and the cycle continues. This is the developing world multiplied by about 4 billion. The new twist is globalization. What was thought to be a new economic windfall for the west has come to be understood more as a wake up call that ‘their’ problems are ‘our’ problems because we are really connected now. We share the same air, the same resources, and linkages created by economics, the web, travel, new media, and the lot have brought the problems of wrenching poverty to our doorstep. Places like Darfur are our responsibility and with just a little bit of understanding about why the poor black child is standing in the desert with the flies in his eyes and why Hugo Chavez is taking back his country, and why someone like Aung San Soo Kyi spent years in house arrest- organizations like Oxfam, Free the Children and the David Suzuki Foundation, will have more success at stopping the spiral, connecting us with them and making the world a more fair place to live. Everything is connected. Not one of the great challenges of our time can be solved in a vacuum. Pandemics, the environment, war, racism, poverty are all one, just like us.

So go back and read about the Global Action to Eradicate Poverty. I really want this to be just history, a cautionary tail-not the reality I want my children growing up under.



Governmental accountability, trade justice, more development aid and debt cancellation

The Giant Killers

Although I grew up in Oshawa ON, I was born out west and my earliest memories of hockey are of the 1980s Edmonton Oilers. We lived in Lethbridge for a few years and I remember I had a real bad-ass Oilers tuque, and I wore it proudly. Although indoctrinated into the Church of The Maple Leaf when we moved here when I was about 7 I still carried a soft spot for The Oilers. In recent years I have been gravitaing back to them as my favourite team. Heart, energy and a truer sense of the roots of the game are what the Oilers embody. And Ryan Smyth is so Ol' skool rink rat you gotta love him. Anyway, last night's win over Detroit was so sweet vindication for this team that has been booted out of the first round for the last 8 years. The Edmonton Oilers are rock n' roll.