Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
I really have problems trying to understand the rationale behind offering economic assistance to a dictator who has willing destroyed the their own economy. It is what we did with North Korea and may well do again. Now France is saying that is what we must do with Mugabe.
"Sanctions are getting nowhere," said one French official. "It's a lot of hot air and frankly everyone recognises that, even the British." The French want to open negotiations with Mr Mugabe, offering the carrot of economic aid in return for a pledge to improve his appalling human rights record.
Are they so foolish to not know that the economic destruction visited by Mugabes rule is done by intent? That food aid that goes to Zimbabwe is not permitted to be distributed to areas where opposition forces are strong. Do they think that any economic aid given would not go directly to Mugabe and his cronies while the famine continues for the rest of the country? But of course the French believe this. They believe it of Saddam, Castro and Kim. So why not Comrade Bob, too?
I am sorry to see people suffer but why is it our obligation to pour money into a dictatorship that causes their suffering and hope that money will cause that dictator to change his ways? What good does it do for the oppressed? Nearly 10 years of such aid to north Korea has resulted in 2 million starved to death and the rest bordering on starvation while hundreds of thousands are sent to gulags and nuclear weapon research continued apace.
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