Communication Beat

African Aid
By
William Cate

Africa, like everywhere else in the world, has its fair share of honest, intelligent; hardworking people who want to see their families have a better standard of living. Unfortunately, most of these people are living below the poverty line. The reasons that Africa, with all of its natural resources, is an economic basket case are complex. They start with the 16th Century Africans’ failure to adopt an effective immigration policy. The result was the European immigrants divided up the continent without regard to historic tribal boundaries. The modern result has been tribal wars waged with modern weapons from the Sudan to Rwanda.

After WWII, the West’s development schemes have been a long litany in stupid projects. A few of my favorite examples include:
1. The British Groundnut Project: After WWII, the British found themselves with lots of heavy equipment that needed a use. The British shipped it to Africa and cleared thousands of hectares of tropical jungle. The idea was to grow peanuts and export them back to Britain. Nobody considered the fact that the soils in a jungle are lateritic and, once the jungle was cleared, the exposed areas quickly evolved into concrete parking lots. Not one peanut ever reached England.
2. The Americans Built Highways to Nowhere: After WWII, the Americans built four lane roads in countries with less than one hundred cars. The local Government owned most of the cars. Years later, I sat at a roadside food stand and counted three cars passing in the five hours it took the only bus to travel that road to pick me up.
3. If you think stupidity is limited to English speakers, consider that the Norwegian Government granted US$25 million to build a fish-freezing plant in rural Africa. After the plant was built, someone noticed that the local people don’t catch or eat fish. They herd goats.
4. The Soviets built a milk bottling plant in North Africa. The local people don’t drink bottled milk and there is no way to ship the milk elsewhere. The plant has yet to ship its first bottle of milk.
5. In East Africa, the Yugoslavian Government built a factory to can mangos. The factory has a capacity that exceeds the entire world’s trade in canned mangos.
6. The Italians built a banana processing plant, but the quantity of bananas needed for the plant to breakeven exceed the entire country’s banana production.
7. The Americans designed and the Soviet’s build the Aswan Dam. Before it was built, studies showed that by 2006, the amount of new irrigation agriculture developed above the dam would be offset by the salinization of the Nile River Delta below the dam. Meanwhile, the Egyptian population would grow and the result would be a constant threat of national starvation. The studies were right.

Everywhere, politicians and bureaucrats produce nothing. In Africa
and elsewhere, the political system runs on the axiom: What’s mine is mine. What’s yours we’ll share. In all but four countries, upon independence a one party political system evolved with a single ruler. The result was instant corruption. When Mobutu Sese Seko left office, he had accumulated a $10 billion dollar fortune. He could have written a check and paid off Zaire’s $7 Billion foreign debt and still had enough to get by amply in the West. It isn’t simply the fact that almost all African leaders are corrupt and dictatorial, it’s the fact that most opposition party leaders are seeking office to rape the country. The result is a political vacuum that makes it nearly impossible to help the honest, hardworking Africans create a middle class and stabilize their country.

Today, Prime Minister Blair wants to make another attempt at saving African Swiss-Bank Socialism. His plan is to forgive the debt of the poorest African countries. I’d agree, since this debt will never be repaid. Tying it to countries “on the road to economic reform” is nonsense. Mr. Blair’s plan is to double aid from rich nations’ taxpayers to US$25 billion each year and US$50 billion annually starting in 2015. The Gnomes in Switzerland must be licking their chops. . Mr. Blair’s proposal confirms that the Swiss banks can keep their African clients’ accounts and expect to see those accounts grow annually by billions of dollars.

Thanks to the Prime Minister, President Bush has added US$674 million for humanitarian assistance of which US$414 million will go to food aid in the Horn of Africa. Certainly everyone realizes that starvation is a terrible way to slowly die. Unfortunately, due to Global Warming, the 21st Century epitaph for the Horn of Africa will be pending starvation.

Sending money to NGOs (Non-Government Agencies) does see some of that money converted into help for the local people. However, the taxpayer rarely gets fair value for the money sent to any third party. I think funding the eradication of assorted African diseases is in everyone’s best interests. >From ridding the continent of River Blindness to finding a way to remove schistosomiasis from Africa’s waterways, without damaging the environment, is everyone’s social obligation. The West has started to address the issue of African AIDs. We are finding ways to ensure that everyone who is HIV positive has access to modern drugs. Better health for everyone in Africa is a key to allowing a large middle class to evolve.

Mr. Blair and the G8 leaders should realize that trickle down aid is the source of African Swiss-Bank Socialism. If the Prime Minister wants to help the honest, intelligent and hardworking people of Africa, he should take his lead from the women of West Africa. A group of women each put some money into a pot. Then one of the women uses the collected funds to buy something to start a business. As her business prospers, she repays her debt and the next woman, using the same risk capital, starts her business. Eventually, all the women are in business. Usually, about this time along comes a local bureaucrat seeking bribes to allow the women to remain in business. What if the West supplied the local pots of loan capital? What if the local tribal elders had the power to expose corrupt officials seeking bribes? What if the G8 required laws to protect the small businesspersons so that they could prosper? Sadly, none of these options needs to be considered as long as the West thinks African Swiss-Bank Socialism is the way to African Economic Growth. It isn’t.

Given African reality, if I were an African businessperson, I’d follow the lead of African politicians and move my money offshore. My family would soon follow.

About the Author

He has been the Managing Director of Beowulf Investments [http://home.earthlink.net/~beowulfinvestments/globalvillageinvestmentclubwelcome/]

I have had many confidence issues in my life, all of which I have either dealt with or overcome. I have written about some of these issues below.

1. The Bald Patch

2. My height

3. My weight

4. The stutter

5. My lack of belief in myself

6. My career

THE BALD PATCH

Even though to some people it may seem trivial, I was born with a bald patch the size of a ten pence piece. As I went through childhood and especially the teenage years I became more and more self-conscious and paranoid about it.

It was especially noticeable when it rained or when I went swimming as my hair would become wet. People at school would ridicule me and I was forever trying to hide and cover the bald patch even though most people knew about it.

It hurt when people laughed at me and eventually I stopped going swimming altogether.

MY HEIGHT

Out of all of my close male family and friends, I am the shortest at 5ft 4. This probably should not influence my confidence however with people continually looking down on me it did. I have been called many names, the nicest being “Shorty”.

I was always jealous of other people taller than I was. I hoped that one day I might have a late spurt. This never came.

My height affected me with sport. I wanted to be a striker at football however the coaches only wanted people over 6ft tall. At snooker I am constantly have to use the rest which makes it difficult to play up to the best standard and at tennis I was constantly being lobbed.
It also meant that I only felt comfortable dating women 5ft 3 and under which reduces the available market considerably.

MY WEIGHT

During senior school I was very thin. This may have been the result of my parents turning vegetarian when I was twelve. At the time there were very few replacement foods and it seemed as though we went from having meat and two veg to just two veg.

As my parents cooked the food I had little option but to also turn vegetarian. After a few weeks I approached them and told them that I missed and wanted to eat meat. They were understanding to a degree and said:

“If you want it, you cook it”

At this age I could only really be bothered to cook properly a few days of the week and that gradually became less and less.

People at school would call me names like skin and bone and my weight became another area of paranoia for me.

THE STUTTER

At the age of four I developed a stutter. This became gradually worse as I became older even though my parents were told that I would grow out of it.

For what fluent people would class as simple tasks like reading from a book at school, answering questions, saying my name and address, ordering items at the bar or in a restaurant, and speaking on the telephone became a constant battle.

It was a very frustrating impediment, as I seemed to be able to talk quite fluently to people I knew well and whom I felt comfortable with, but at other times especially under any form of pressure could not say a word.

At the age of twenty two after about eleven months of sheer hard work and practice I managed to overcome the stutter and I now help other people who stutter to achieve fluency as well as helping people with confidence problems.

For more information about how I overcame the stutter please refer to http://www.stammering-stuttering.co.uk or contact me for an information pack.

MY LACK OF BELIEF

I always had a lack of belief in certain areas.

I would notice a female in a bar for example and would want to go over and talk to her but would have the negative attitude of I’m not good enough, why would she be interested in me? I stutter, I have a bald patch, I have a menial job and I am very thin.

Even if I approach her and am successful, I would then be expected to buy her a drink, possibly phone her, possibly meet her parents, and maybe even get married! The thought of attempting these things with a stutter and with a lack of social confidence was far too daunting for me.

I left school at sixteen mainly due to a lack of confidence and the stutter, but then had the problem of finding a job. Again my lack of belief came shining through. Who would want to employ somebody with a stutter, who has a lack of confidence and who is shy around people?

MY CAREER

After leaving school at the age of sixteen I now had to find employment. Suffering with a stutter and a general lack of confidence meant that work involving the phone or regular interaction with other people were not really an option.

I decided that I could probably cope with filing duties in an office and eventually gained a position at an insurance company.

I started at the lowest grade, a grade two and the work was routine and mundane. The average time to stay at this level before being promoted was six months. The grade three post involved sharing a phone and this is something I found very difficult to use.

To become upgraded you had to apply in writing to the personal officer and then if you passed the interview were then promoted. My attitude was that if I don’t apply I would stay as a grade two, which is what I wanted. I was probably the only person in the country who did not want to be promoted.

My boss would ask me at regular intervals why I was not applying and I would make up an excuse. To keep him happy I took the insurance exams.
After three years I had completed the first qualification which was a set of five exams. To my horror my boss congratulated me by stating that he was upgrading me to a grade three starting Monday without the need of an interview.

This promotion should in effect have given me a confidence boost however with my stutter out of control under the pressure and some of my colleagues mocking me I became more and more withdrawn and depressed.

I would be invited to social events and would make up excuses of why I could not go as I had a lack of belief that I could cope with the occasion and all the socialising involved.

If you are interested in a free link exchange program where you receive ten backward links please click here (link to www.internet-webdesign.co.uk).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Hill is somebody who has overcome a stammer/stutter and who now helps other people to achieve fluency. Stephen runs one to one speech courses held in Birmingham, England. For people who are unable to attend there is a seventy minute dvd available. His main website is at http://www.stammering-stuttering.co.uk.

Hair Drug Testing

False vs. Reality

False: Hair drug testing is operational, but not a ordinary process of drug testing, because it is therefore pricey.

Closed: drug tests are so far more than costly rather than a standardurinalysis–we’re talking dollar bills to cents here–and is a more innovative form of drug testing, so most employers opt for a basic urine drug test. Psychemedics, the companythat creates hair drug tests in the United States, has been quite productive at depressing the cost and maximizing knowingness, but a full switch from urine to hairhas a ways ahead.

Myths: There is small difference of opinion between a urine drug test, and hair drug testing.

Truth: Quite untrue. A urine drug test is simpler, less expensive, widely open, and at this point, an acknowledged course of drug testing. Hair drug testing isn’t as invasive–inducing it complete for confidential regions of testing, such as student drug tests–than its similitude.

Open: Hair drug testing can find toxin vulnerability and/or illicit drug use frommany ages ago.

Truth: Indeed, hair drug testing will reveal drug “use”–direct andindirect exposure–as many as seven years. The hair strand is analyzed similar toassessing the age of a tree by its internal ring structure. Body hair is likea Velcro for all things ingested from your diet, the air you breathe, and yes, to any banned substances. This is a great benefit of hair drug testing, butalso puts a greater rational dilemma: is vulnerability real “use”?

Myths: Hair drug testing can be thwarted by trimming your head.

Truth: While remaining vacant of hair may appear to make sense when posed witha drug test that applies hair as its specimen, unfortunately for you, no, it doesn’t work.For example, not like you could go out, purchase a Bic razor, shave your head, and pass hair drug testmethods simply because your bald! The examiner will justclip body hair. There is no way to trim your way out of a hair drug test.

Obama’s impending visit to Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories in the West Bank has generated a lot of interesting buzz. Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama will be in the Middle East beginning July 22. While in the Middle East, the Democratic nominee will meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres and other prominent Israeli political personalities. Obama will also meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President. Earlier in the campaign, Senator John McCain criticized Obama for his failure to visit Iraq in a long time. Now, it seems like McCain has changed his mind as he and the Republicans, are calling the trip a political stunt and a major media event. Obama’s trip will certainly be a media circus as it has been reported that at least 3 major broadcast reporters will be joining him. However, his arrival in Iraq might be met with conflicting emotions due to his support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Though many Iraqis share his dream of the pulling out of American forces in the country, many are also confused because it might lead to chaos. Others are more concerned about the possible loss of security gains once the troops pull out. Whether Obama’s visit will be met with praise or conflict, at the end of the day, what will matter most will be its impact on American voters.