First let me express my appreciation for the thoughtful and gracious
comments on my 'Trickle Down' post suggesting that the poverty of our
poorest 150 or so countries is rooted not in international but in internal,
DOMESTIC causes--in, primarily, corrupt and incompetent 3rd world leadership.
This does not mean, of course, that progressive STRATEGY should bypass the
globe's rich democracies and focus solely on the dictators who're the
IMMEDIATE source of the world's poverty problem. It was, after all,
pressure from the wealthy and powerful nations that ultimately ended, for
example, apartheid in South Africa. If they put their minds to it, they
could probably find ways to rid ALL the world's poor nations of the
corrupt/incompetent governments that currently assure the continued poverty
of their masses of citizens.
A 'bank-shot' strategy--applying pressure to the handful of affluent
nations to push THEM to use THEIR considerable global power to somehow oust
the world's tyrants--sounds quite sensible to me. Individual progressives,
no matter how large their numbers might ultimately become worldwide, would
face a daunting task if they should try to confront those dictators
directly, on their own turf--where they have the power to freely clap
dissenters in irons, or worse. Who among us, for example, would want to
take on the job of organizing a protest march in, say, Cuba--not to mention
North Korea?
The point, of course, is that j18 needs to focus its intellectual and
other kinds of energy on the core question, namely: How can those 3 or 4
billion citizens of the world's 150 or so poorest countries be FREED from
the corrupt/incompetent leaders who're keeping them impoverished?
This is, I'm confident, the right question. But what's the ANSWER? That,
in my view, is the real task facing the good people who are now gathering
under the j18 banner. With hundreds of thoughtful people sharing their
individual insights here for the next couple of months, we might well have
a global breakthrough by June 18.
Charles
Charles Mueller, Moderator
Mueller's Poverty of Nations List
([log in to unmask])
___
Mueller's Land-Reform List
([log in to unmask])
___
Mueller's Antimonopoly List
([log in to unmask])
___
UNsubscribe: Add 'un' to above addresses
___
(Archives at:
http://www.egroups.com/list/poverty-nations
http://www.egroups.com/list/land-reform
http://www.egroups.com/list/antimonopoly)
___
(Antimonopoly Web site:
http://webpages.metrolink.net/~cmueller)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|